TO HER.

Out of the glowing heart of the torrent of glory and light,

At the foot of Jehovah's throne where the angels stand afar,

Each on a seistron of gold repeating the prayers of the night,

Put up for each by his star.

Out from the cherubim choir a bright-haired Angel springs,

Veiling the glory of God that dwells on a dazzling brow,

Leaving the courts of heaven to sink upon silver wings

Down to our world below.

God looked in pity on earth, and the Angel, reading His thought,

Came down to lull the pain of the mighty spirit at strife,

Reverent bent o'er the maid, and for age left desolate brought

Flowers of the springtime of life.

Bringing a dream of hope to solace the mother's fears,

Hearkening unto the voice of the tardy repentant cry,

Glad as angels are glad, to reckon Earth's pitying tears,

Given with alms of a sigh.

One there is, and but one, bright messenger sent from the skies

Whom earth like a lover fain would hold from the hea'nward flight;

But the angel, weeping, turns and gazes with sad, sweet eyes

Up to the heaven of light.

Not by the radiant eyes, not by the kindling glow

Of virtue sent from God, did I know the secret sign,

Nor read the token sent on a white and dazzling brow

Of an origin divine.

Nay, it was Love grown blind and dazed with excess of light,

Striving and striving in vain to mingle Earth and Heaven,

Helpless and powerless against the invincible armor bright

By the dread archangel given.

Ah! be wary, take heed, lest aught should be seen or heard

Of the shining seraph band, as they take the heavenward way;

Too soon the Angel on Earth will learn the magical word

Sung at the close of the day.

Then you shall see afar, rifting the darkness of night,

A gleam as of dawn that spread across the starry floor,

And the seaman that watch for a sign shall mark the track of their flight,

A luminous pathway in Heaven and a beacon for evermore.

"Do you read the riddle?" said Amelie, giving M. du Chatelet a

coquettish glance.

"It is the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we

left school," said the Baron with a bored expression--he was acting

his part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. "We used to deal

in Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and

warriors who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads.

Nowadays this poetical frippery has been replaced by Jehovah, angels,

seistrons, the plumes of seraphim, and all the paraphernalia of

paradise freshened up with a few new words such as 'immense, infinite,

solitude, intelligence'; you have lakes, and the words of the

Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most

extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude,

in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just

as thick as before."

"If the ode is obscure, the declaration is very clear, it seems to

me," said Zephirine.

"And the archangel's armor is a tolerably thin gauze robe," said

Francis.

Politeness demanded that the audience should profess to be enchanted

with the poem; and the women, furious because they had no poets in

their train to extol them as angels, rose, looked bored by the

reading, murmuring, "Very nice!" "Charming!" "Perfect!" with frigid

coldness.

"If you love me, do not congratulate the poet or his angel," Lolotte

laid her commands on her dear Adrien in imperious tones, and Adrien

was fain to obey.

"Empty words, after all," Zephirine remarked to Francis, "and love is

a poem that we live."

"You have just expressed the very thing that I was thinking, Zizine,

but I should not have put it so neatly," said Stanislas, scanning

himself from top to toe with loving attention.

"I would give, I don't know how much, to see Nais' pride brought down

a bit," said Amelie, addressing Chatelet. "Nais sets up to be an

archangel, as if she were better than the rest of us, and mixes us up

with low people; his father was an apothecary, and his mother is a

nurse; his sister works in a laundry, and he himself is a printer's

foreman."

"If his father sold biscuits for worms" (_vers_), said Jacques, "he

ought to have made his son take them."

"He is continuing in his father's line of business, for the stuff that

he has just been reading to us is a drug in the market, it seems,"

said Stanislas, striking one of his most killing attitudes. "Drug for

drug, I would rather have something else."

Every one apparently combined to humiliate Lucien by various

aristocrats' sarcasms. Lili the religious thought it a charitable deed

to use any means of enlightening Nais, and Nais was on the brink of a

piece of folly. Francis the diplomatist undertook the direction of the

silly conspiracy; every one was interested in the progress of the

drama; it would be something to talk about to-morrow. The ex-consul,

being far from anxious to engage in a duel with a young poet who would

fly into a rage at the first hint of insult under his lady's eyes, was

wise enough to see that the only way of dealing Lucien his deathblow

was by the spiritual arm which was safe from vengeance. He therefore

followed the example set by Chatelet the astute, and went to the

Bishop. Him he proceeded to mystify.

He told the Bishop that Lucien's mother was a woman of uncommon powers

and great modesty, and that it was she who found the subjects for her

son's verses. Nothing pleased Lucien so much, according to the

guileful Francis, as any recognition of her talents--he worshiped his

mother. Then, having inculcated these notions, he left the rest to

time. His lordship was sure to bring out the insulting allusion, for

which he had been so carefully prepared, in the course of

conversation.

When Francis and the Bishop joined the little group where Lucien

stood, the circle who gave him the cup of hemlock to drain by little

sips watched him with redoubled interest. The poet, luckless young

man, being a total stranger, and unaware of the manners and customs of

the house, could only look at Mme. de Bargeton and give embarrassed

answers to embarrassing questions. He knew neither the names nor

condition of the people about him; the women's silly speeches made him

blush for them, and he was at his wits' end for a reply. He felt,

moreover, how very far removed he was from these divinities of

Angouleme when he heard himself addressed sometimes as M. Chardon,

sometimes as M. de Rubempre, while they addressed each other as

Lolotte, Adrien, Astolphe, Lili and Fifine. His confusion rose to a

height when, taking Lili for a man's surname, he addressed the coarse

M. de Senonches as M. Lili; that Nimrod broke in upon him with a

"_MONSIEUR LULU?_" and Mme. de Bargeton flushed red to the eyes.

"A woman must be blind indeed to bring this little fellow among us!"

muttered Senonches.

Zephirine turned to speak to the Marquise de Pimentel--"Do you not see

a strong likeness between M. Chardon and M. de Cante-Croix, madame?"

she asked in a low but quite audible voice.

"The likeness is ideal," smiled Mme. de Pimentel.

"Glory has a power of attraction to which we can confess," said Mme.

de Bargeton, addressing the Marquise. "Some women are as much

attracted by greatness as others by littleness," she added, looking at

Francis.

The was beyond Zephirine's comprehension; she thought her consul a

very great man; but the Marquise laughed, and her laughter ranged her

on Nais' side.

"You are very fortunate, monsieur," said the Marquis de Pimentel,

addressing Lucien for the purpose of calling him M. de Rubempre, and

not M. Chardon, as before; "you should never find time heavy on your

hands."

"Do you work quickly?" asked Lolotte, much in the way that she would

have asked a joiner "if it took long to make a box."

The bludgeon stroke stunned Lucien, but he raised his head at Mme. de

Bargeton's reply--

"My dear, poetry does not grow in M. de Rubempre's head like grass in

our courtyards."

"Madame, we cannot feel too reverently towards the noble spirits in

whom God has set some ray of this light," said the Bishop, addressing

Lolotte. "Yes, poetry is something holy. Poetry implies suffering. How

many silent nights those verses that you admire have cost! We should

bow in love and reverence before the poet; his life here is almost

always a life of sorrow; but God doubtless reserves a place in heaven

for him among His prophets. This young man is a poet," he added laying

a hand on Lucien's head; "do you not see the sign of Fate set on that

high forehead of his?"

Glad to be so generously championed, Lucien made his acknowledgments

in a grateful look, not knowing that the worthy prelate was to deal

his deathblow.

Mme. de Bargeton's eyes traveled round the hostile circle. Her glances

went like arrows to the depths of her rivals' hearts, and left them

twice as furious as before.

"Ah, monseigneur," cried Lucien, hoping to break thick heads with his

golden sceptre, "but ordinary people have neither your intellect nor

your charity. No one heeds our sorrows, our toil is unrecognized. The

gold-digger working in the mine does not labor as we to wrest

metaphors from the heart of the most ungrateful of all languages. If

this is poetry--to give ideas such definite and clear expressions that

all the world can see and understand--the poet must continually range

through the entire scale of human intellects, so that he can satisfy

the demands of all; he must conceal hard thinking and emotion, two

antagonistic powers, beneath the most vivid color; he must know how to

make one word cover a whole world of thought; he must give the results

of whole systems of philosophy in a few picturesque lines; indeed, his

songs are like seeds that must break into blossom in other hearts

wherever they find the soil prepared by personal experience. How can

you express unless you first have felt? And is not passion suffering.

Poetry is only brought forth after painful wanderings in the vast

regions of thought and life. There are men and women in books, who

seem more really alive to us than men and women who have lived and

died--Richardson's Clarissa, Chenier's Camille, the Delia of Tibullus,

Ariosto's Angelica, Dante's Francesca, Moliere's Alceste,

Beaumarchais' Figaro, Scott's Rebecca the Jewess, the Don Quixote of

Cervantes,--do we not owe these deathless creations to immortal

throes?"

"And what are you going to create for us?" asked Chatelet.

"If I were to announce such conceptions, I should give myself out for

a man of genius, should I not?" answered Lucien. "And besides, such

sublime creations demand a long experience of the world and a study of

human passion and interests which I could not possibly have made; but

I have made a beginning," he added, with bitterness in his tone, as he

took a vengeful glance round the circle; "the time of gestation is

long----"

"Then it will be a case of difficult labor," interrupted M. du Hautoy.

"Your excellent mother might assist you," suggested the Bishop.

The epigram, innocently made by the good prelate, the long-looked-for

revenge, kindled a gleam of delight in all eyes. The smile of

satisfied caste that traveled from mouth to mouth was aggravated by M.

de Bargeton's imbecility; he burst into a laugh, as usual, some

moments later.

"Monseigneur, you are talking a little above our heads; these ladies

do not understand your meaning," said Mme. de Bargeton, and the words

paralyzed the laughter, and drew astonished eyes upon her. "A poet who

looks to the Bible for his inspiration has a mother indeed in the

Church.--M. de Rubempre, will you recite _Saint John in Patmos_ for us,

or _Belshazzar's Feast_, so that his lordship may see that Rome is still

the _Magna Parens_ of Virgil?"

The women exchanged smiles at the Latin words.

The bravest and highest spirits know times of prostration at the

outset of life. Lucien had sunk to the depths at the blow, but he

struck the bottom with his feet, and rose to the surface again, vowing

to subjugate this little world. He rose like a bull, stung to fury by

a shower of darts, and prepared to obey Louise by declaiming _Saint

John in Patmos_; but by this time the card-tables had claimed their

complement of players, who returned to the accustomed groove to find

amusement there which poetry had not afforded them. They felt besides

that the revenge of so many outraged vanities would be incomplete

unless it were followed up by contemptuous indifference; so they

showed their tacit disdain for the native product by leaving Lucien

and Mme. de Bargeton to themselves. Every one appeared to be absorbed

in his own affairs; one chattered with the prefect about a new

crossroad, another proposed to vary the pleasures of the evening with

a little music. The great world of Angouleme, feeling that it was no

judge of poetry, was very anxious, in the first place, to hear the

verdict of the Pimentels and the Rastignacs, and formed a little group

about them. The great influence wielded in the department by these two

families was always felt on every important occasion; every one was

jealous of them, every one paid court to them, foreseeing that they

might some day need that influence.

"What do you think of our poet and his poetry?" Jacques asked of the

Marquise. Jacques used to shoot over the lands belonging to the

Pimentel family.

"Why, it is not bad for provincial poetry," she said, smiling; "and

besides, such a beautiful poet cannot do anything amiss."

Every one thought the decision admirable; it traveled from lip to lip,

gaining malignance by the way. Then Chatelet was called upon to

accompany M. du Bartas on the piano while he mangled the great solo

from _Figaro_; and the way being opened to music, the audience, as in

duty bound listened while Chatelet in turn sang one of Chateaubriand's

ballads, a chivalrous ditty made in the time of the Empire. Duets

followed, of the kind usually left to boarding-school misses, and

rescued from the schoolroom by Mme. du Brossard, who meant to make a

brilliant display of her dear Camille's talents for M. de Severac's

benefit.

Mme. du Bargeton, hurt by the contempt which every one showed her

poet, paid back scorn for scorn by going to her boudoir during these

performances. She was followed by the prelate. His Vicar-General had

just been explaining the profound irony of the epigram into which he

had been entrapped, and the Bishop wished to make amends. Mlle. de

Rastignac, fascinated by the poetry, also slipped into the boudoir

without her mother's knowledge.

Louise drew Lucien to her mattress-cushioned sofa; and with no one to

see or hear, she murmured in his ear, "Dear angel, they did not

understand you; but, 'Thy songs are sweet, I love to say them over.'"

And Lucien took comfort from the pretty speech, and forgot his woes

for a little.

"Glory is not to be had cheaply," Mme. de Bargeton continued, taking

his hand and holding it tightly in her own. "Endure your woes, my

friend, you will be great one day; your pain is the price of your

immortality. If only I had a hard struggle before me! God preserve you

from the enervating life without battles, in which the eagle's wings

have no room to spread themselves. I envy you; for if you suffer, at

least you live. You will put out your strength, you will feel the hope

of victory; your strife will be glorious. And when you shall come to

your kingdom, and reach the imperial sphere where great minds are

enthroned, then remember the poor creatures disinherited by fate,

whose intellects pine in an oppressive moral atmosphere, who die and

have never lived, knowing all the while what life might be; think of

the piercing eyes that have seen nothing, the delicate senses that

have only known the scent of poison flowers. Then tell in your song of

plants that wither in the depths of the forest, choked by twining

growths and rank, greedy vegetation, plants that have never been

kissed by the sunlight, and die, never having put forth a blossom. It

would be a terribly gloomy poem, would it not, a fanciful subject?

What a sublime poem might be made of the story of some daughter of the

desert transported to some cold, western clime, calling for her

beloved sun, dying of a grief that none can understand, overcome with

cold and longing. It would be an allegory; many lives are like that."

"You would picture the spirit which remembers Heaven," said the

Bishop; "some one surely must have written such a poem in the days of

old; I like to think that I see a fragment of it in the Song of

Songs."

"Take that as your subject," said Laure de Rastignac, expressing her

artless belief in Lucien's powers.

"The great sacred poem of France is still unwritten," remarked the

Bishop. "Believe me, glory and success await the man of talent who

shall work for religion."

"That task will be his," said Mme. de Bargeton rhetorically. "Do you

not see the first beginnings of the vision of the poem, like the flame

of dawn, in his eyes?"

"Nais is treating us very badly," said Fifine; "what can she be

doing?"

"Don't you hear?" said Stanislas. "She is flourishing away, using big

words that you cannot make head or tail of."

Amelie, Fifine, Adrien, and Francis appeared in the doorway with Mme.

de Rastignac, who came to look for her daughter.

"Nais," cried the two ladies, both delighted to break in upon the

quiet chat in the boudoir, "it would be very nice of you to come and

play something for us."

"My dear child, M. de Rubempre is just about to recite his _Saint John

in Patmos_, a magnificent biblical poem."

"Biblical!" echoed Fifine in amazement.

Amelie and Fifine went back to the drawing-room, taking the word back

with them as food for laughter. Lucien pleaded a defective memory and

excused himself. When he reappeared, nobody took the slightest notice

of him; every one was chatting or busy at the card-tables; the poet's

aureole had been plucked away, the landowners had no use for him, the

more pretentious sort looked upon him as an enemy to their ignorance,

while the women were jealous of Mme. de Bargeton, the Beatrice of this

modern Dante, to use the Vicar-General's phrase, and looked at him

with cold, scornful eyes.

"So this is society!" Lucien said to himself as he went down to

L'Houmeau by the steps of Beaulieu; for there are times when we choose

to take the longest way, that the physical exercise of walking may

promote the flow of ideas.

So far from being disheartened, the fury of repulsed ambition gave

Lucien new strength. Like all those whose instincts bring them to a

higher social sphere which they reach before they can hold their own

in it, Lucien vowed to make any sacrifice to the end that he might

remain on that higher social level. One by one he drew out the

poisoned shafts on his way home, talking aloud to himself, scoffing at

the fools with whom he had to do, inventing neat answers to their

idiotic questions, desperately vexed that the witty responses occurred

to him so late in the day. By the time that he reached the Bordeaux

road, between the river and the foot of the hill, he thought that he

could see Eve and David sitting on a baulk of timber by the river in

the moonlight, and went down the footpath towards them.

While Lucien was hastening to the torture in Mme. de Bargeton's rooms,

his sister had changed her dress for a gown of pink cambric covered

with narrow stripes, a straw hat, and a little silk shawl. The simple

costume seemed like a rich toilette on Eve, for she was one of those

women whose great nature lends stateliness to the least personal

detail; and David felt prodigiously shy of her now that she had

changed her working dress. He had made up his mind that he would speak

of himself; but now as he gave his arm to this beautiful girl, and

they walked through L'Houmeau together, he could find nothing to say

to her. Love delights in such reverent awe as redeemed souls know on

beholding the glory of God. So, in silence, the two lovers went across

the Bridge of Saint Anne, and followed the left bank of the Charente.

Eve felt embarrassed by the pause, and stopped to look along the

river; a joyous shaft of sunset had turned the water between the

bridge and the new powder mills into a sheet of gold.

"What a beautiful evening it is!" she said, for the sake of saying

something; "the air is warm and fresh, and full of the scent of

flowers, and there is a wonderful sky."

"Everything speaks to our heart," said David, trying to proceed to

love by way of analogy. "Those who love find infinite delight in

discovering the poetry of their own inmost souls in every chance

effect of the landscape, in the thin, clear air, in the scent of the

earth. Nature speaks for them."

"And loosens their tongues, too," Eve said merrily. "You were very

silent as we came through L'Houmeau. Do you know, I felt quite

uncomfortable----"

"You looked so beautiful, that I could not say anything," David

answered candidly.

"Then, just now I am not so beautiful?" inquired she.

"It is not that," he said; "but I was so happy to have this walk alone

with you, that----" he stopped short in confusion, and looked at the

hillside and the road to Saintes.

"If the walk is any pleasure to you, I am delighted; for I owe you an

evening, I think, when you have given up yours for me. When you

refused to go to Mme. de Bargeton's, you were quite as generous as

Lucien when he made the demand at the risk of vexing her."

"No, not generous, only wise," said David. "And now that we are quite

alone under the sky, with no listeners except the bushes and the reeds

by the edge of the Charente, let me tell you about my anxiety as to

Lucien's present step, dear Eve. After all that I have just said, I

hope that you will look on my fears as a refinement of friendship. You

and your mother have done all that you could to put him above his

social position; but when you stimulated his ambition, did you not

unthinkingly condemn him to a hard struggle? How can he maintain

himself in the society to which his tastes incline him? I know Lucien;

he likes to reap, he does not like toil; it is his nature. Social

claims will take up the whole of his time, and for a man who has

nothing but his brains, time is capital. He likes to shine; society

will stimulate his desires until no money will satisfy them; instead

of earning money, he will spend it. You have accustomed him to believe

in his great powers, in fact, but the world at large declines to

believe in any man's superior intellect until he has achieved some

signal success. Now success in literature is only won in solitude and

by dogged work. What will Mme. de Bargeton give your brother in return

for so many days spent at her feet? Lucien has too much spirit to

accept help from her; and he cannot afford, as we know, to cultivate

her society, twice ruinous as it is for him. Sooner or later that

woman will throw over this dear brother of ours, but not before she

has spoiled him for hard work, and given him a taste for luxury and a

contempt for our humdrum life. She will develop his love of enjoyment,

his inclination for idleness, that debauches a poetic soul. Yes, it

makes me tremble to think that this great lady may make a plaything of

Lucien. If she cares for him sincerely, he will forget everything else

for her; or if she does not love him, she will make him unhappy, for

he is wild about her."

"You have sent a chill of dread through my heart," said Eve, stopping

as they reached the weir. "But so long as mother is strong enough for

her tiring life, so long as I live, we shall earn enough, perhaps,

between us to keep Lucien until success comes. My courage will never

fail," said Eve, brightening. "There is no hardship in work when we

work for one we love; it is not drudgery. It makes me happy to think

that I toil so much, if indeed it is toil, for him. Oh, do not be in

the least afraid, we will earn money enough to send Lucien into the

great world. There lies his road to success."

"And there lies his road to ruin," returned David. "Dear Eve, listen

to me. A man needs an independent fortune, or the sublime cynicism of

poverty, for the slow execution of great work. Believe me, Lucien's

horror of privation is so great, the savor of banquets, the incense of

success is so sweet in his nostrils, his self-love has grown so much

in Mme. de Bargeton's boudoir, that he will do anything desperate

sooner than fall back, and you will never earn enough for his

requirements.

"Then you are only a false friend to him!" Eve cried in despair, "or

you would not discourage us in this way."

"Eve! Eve!" cried David, "if only I could be a brother to Lucien! You

alone can give me that title; he could accept anything from me then; I

should claim the right of devoting my life to him with the love that

hallows your self-sacrifice, but with some worldly wisdom too. Eve, my

darling, give Lucien a store from which he need not blush to draw! His

brother's purse will be like his own, will it not? If you only knew

all my thoughts about Lucien's position! If he means to go to Mme. de

Bargeton's, he must not be my foreman any longer, poor fellow! He

ought not to live in L'Houmeau; you ought not to be a working girl;

and your mother must give up her employment as well. If you would

consent to be my wife, the difficulties will all be smoothed away.

Lucien might live on the second floor in the Place du Murier until I

can build rooms for him over the shed at the back of the yard (if my

father will allow it, that is.). And in that way we would arrange a

free and independent life for him. The wish to support Lucien will

give me a better will to work than I ever should have had for myself

alone; but it rests with you to give me the right to devote myself to

him. Some day, perhaps, he will go to Paris, the only place that can

bring out all that is in him, and where his talents will be

appreciated and rewarded. Living in Paris is expensive, and the

earnings of all three of us will be needed for his support. And

besides, will not you and your mother need some one to lean upon then?

Dear Eve, marry me for love of Lucien; perhaps afterwards you will

love me when you see how I shall strive to help him and to make you

happy. We are, both of us, equally simple in our tastes; we have few

wants; Lucien's welfare shall be the great object of our lives. His

heart shall be our treasure-house, we will lay up all our fortune, and

think and feel and hope in him."

"Worldly considerations keep us apart," said Eve, moved by this love

that tried to explain away its greatness. "You are rich and I am poor.

One must love indeed to overcome such a difficulty."

"Then you do not care enough for me?" cried the stricken David.

"But perhaps your father would object----"

"Never mind," said David; "if asking my father is all that is

necessary, you will be my wife. Eve, my dear Eve, how you have

lightened life for me in a moment; and my heart has been very heavy

with thoughts that I could not utter, I did not know how to speak of

them. Only tell me that you care for me a little, and I will take

courage to tell you the rest."

"Indeed," she said, "you make me quite ashamed; but confidence for

confidence, I will tell you this, that I have never thought of any one

but you in my life. I looked upon you as one of those men to whom a

woman might be proud to belong, and I did not dare to hope so great a

thing for myself, a penniless working girl with no prospects."

"That is enough, that is enough," he answered, sitting down on the bar

by the weir, for they had gone to and fro like mad creatures over the

same length of pathway.

"What is the matter?" she asked, her voice expressing for the first

time a woman's sweet anxiety for one who belongs to her.

"Nothing but good," he answered. "It is the sight of a whole lifetime

of happiness that dazzles me, as it were; it is overwhelming. Why am I

happier than you?" he asked, with a touch of sadness. "For I know that

I am happier."

Eve looked at David with mischievous, doubtful eyes that asked an

explanation.

"Dear Eve, I am taking more than I give. So I shall always love you

more than you love me, because I have more reason to love. You are an

angel; I am a man."

"I am not so learned," Eve said, smiling. "I love you----"

"As much as you love Lucien?" he broke in.

"Enough to be your wife, enough to devote myself to you, to try not to

add anything to your burdens, for we shall have some struggles; it

will not be quite easy at first."

"Dear Eve, have you known that I loved you since the first day I saw

you?"

"Where is the woman who does not feel that she is loved?"

"Now let me get rid of your scruples as to my imaginary riches. I am a

poor man, dear. Yes, it pleased my father to ruin me; he made a

speculation of me, as a good many so-called benefactors do. If I make

a fortune, it will be entirely through you. That is not a lover's

speech, but sober, serious earnest. I ought to tell you about my

faults, for they are exceedingly bad ones in a man who has his way to

make. My character and habits and favorite occupations all unfit me

for business and money-getting, and yet we can only make money by some

kind of industry; if I have some faculty for the discovery of

gold-mines, I am singularly ill-adapted for getting the gold out of

them. But you who, for your brother's sake, went into the smallest

details, with a talent for thrift, and the patient watchfulness of the

born man of business, you will reap the harvest that I shall sow. The

present state of things, for I have been like one of the family for a

long time, weighs so heavily upon me, that I have spent days and nights

in search of some way of making a fortune. I know something of chemistry,

and a knowledge of commercial requirements has put me on the scent of

a discovery that is likely to pay. I can say nothing as yet about it;

there will be a long while to wait; perhaps for some years we may have

a hard time of it; but I shall find out how to make a commercial

article at last. Others are busy making the same researches, and if I

am first in the field, we shall have a large fortune. I have said

nothing to Lucien, his enthusiastic nature would spoil everything; he

would convert my hopes into realities, and begin to live like a lord,

and perhaps get into debt. So keep my secret for me. Your sweet and

dear companionship will be consolation in itself during the long time

of experiment, and the desire to gain wealth for you and Lucien will

give me persistence and tenacity----"

"I had guessed this too," Eve said, interrupting him; "I knew that you

were one of those inventors, like my poor father, who must have a

woman to take care of them."

"Then you love me! Ah! say so without fear to me, who saw a symbol of

my love for you in your name. Eve was the one woman in the world; if

it was true in the outward world for Adam, it is true again in the

inner world of my heart for me. My God! do you love me?"

"Yes," said she, lengthening out the word as if to make it cover the

extent of feeling expressed by a single syllable.

"Well, let us sit here," he said, and taking Eve's hand, he went to a

great baulk of timber lying below the wheels of a paper-mill. "Let me

breathe the evening air, and hear the frogs croak, and watch the

moonlight quivering upon the river; let me take all this world about

us into my soul, for it seems to me that my happiness is written large

over it all; I am seeing it for the first time in all its splendor,

lighted up by love, grown fair through you. Eve, dearest, this is the

first moment of pure and unmixed joy that fate has given to me! I do

not think that Lucien can be as happy as I am."

David felt Eve's hand, damp and quivering in his own, and a tear fell

upon it.

"May I not know the secret?" she pleaded coaxingly.

"You have a right to know it, for your father was interested in the

matter, and to-day it is a pressing question, and for this reason.

Since the downfall of the Empire, calico has come more and more into

use, because it is so much cheaper than linen. At the present moment,

paper is made of a mixture of hemp and linen rags, but the raw

material is dear, and the expense naturally retards the great advance

which the French press is bound to make. Now you cannot increase the

output of linen rags, a given population gives a pretty constant

result, and it only increases with the birth-rate. To make any

perceptible difference in the population for this purpose, it would

take a quarter of a century and a great revolution in habits of life,

trade, and agriculture. And if the supply of linen rags is not enough

to meet one-half nor one-third of the demand, some cheaper material

than linen rags must be found for cheap paper. This deduction is based

on facts that came under my knowledge here. The Angouleme

paper-makers, the last to use pure linen rags, say that the proportion

of cotton in the pulp has increased to a frightful extent of late

years."

In answer to a question from Eve, who did not know what "pulp" meant,

David gave an account of paper-making, which will not be out of place

in a volume which owes its existence in book form to the paper

industry no less than to the printing-press; but the long digression,

doubtless, had best be condensed at first.

Paper, an invention not less marvelous than the other dependent

invention of printing, was known in ancient times in China. Thence by

the unrecognized channels of commerce the art reached Asia Minor,

where paper was made of cotton reduced to pulp and boiled. Parchment

had become so extremely dear that a cheap substitute was discovered in

an imitation of the cotton paper known in the East as _charta

bombycina_. The imitation, made from rags, was first made at Basel, in

1170, by a colony of Greek refugees, according to some authorities; or

at Padua, in 1301, by an Italian named Pax, according to others. In

these ways the manufacture of paper was perfected slowly and in

obscurity; but this much is certain, that so early as the reign of

Charles VI., paper pulp for playing-cards was made in Paris.

When those immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book,

craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times

appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth

century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various

formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear the

impress of the naivete of the times; and the various sheets came to be

known by the different watermarks on their centres; the grapes, the

figure of our Saviour, the crown, the shield, or the flower-pot, just

as at a later day, the eagle of Napoleon's time gave the name to the

"double-eagle" size. And in the same way the types were called Cicero,

Saint-Augustine, and Canon type, because they were first used to print

the treatises of Cicero and theological and liturgical works. Italics

are so called because they were invented in Italy by Aldus of Venice.

Before the invention of machine-made paper, which can be woven in any

length, the largest sized sheets were the _grand jesus_ and the double

columbier (this last being scarcely used now except for atlases or

engravings), and the size of paper for printers' use was determined by

the dimensions of the impression-stone. When David explained these

things to Eve, web-paper was almost undreamed of in France, although,

about 1799, Denis Robert d'Essonne had invented a machine for turning

out a ribbon of paper, and Didot-Saint-Leger had since tried to

perfect it. The vellum paper invented by Ambroise Didot only dates

back as far as 1780.

This bird's eye view of the history of the invention shows

incontestably that great industrial and intellectual advances are made

exceedingly slowly, and little by little, even as Nature herself

proceeds. Perhaps articulate speech and the art of writing were

gradually developed in the same groping way as typography and

paper-making.

"Rag-pickers collect all the rags and old linen of Europe," the

printer concluded, "and buy any kind of tissue. The rags are sorted

and warehoused by the wholesale rag merchants, who supply the

paper-mills. To give you some idea of the extent of the trade, you

must know, mademoiselle, that in 1814 Cardon the banker, owner of the

pulping troughs of Bruges and Langlee (where Leorier de l'Isle

endeavored in 1776 to solve the very problem that occupied your

father), Cardon brought an action against one Proust for an error in

weights of two millions in a total of ten million pounds' weight of

rags, worth about four million francs! The manufacturer washes the

rags and reduces them to a thin pulp, which is strained, exactly as a

cook strains sauce through a tamis, through an iron frame with a fine

wire bottom where the mark which give its name to the size of the

paper is woven. The size of this _mould_, as it is called, regulates the

size of the sheet.

"When I was with the Messieurs Didot," David continued, "they were

very much interested in this question, and they are still interested;

for the improvement which your father endeavored to make is a great

commercial requirement, and one of the crying needs of the time. And

for this reason: although linen lasts so much longer than cotton, that

it is in reality cheaper in the end, the poor would rather make the

smaller outlay in the first instance, and, by virtue of the law of _Vae

victis!_ pay enormously more before they have done. The middle classes

do the same. So there is a scarcity of linen. In England, where

four-fifths of the population use cotton to the exclusion of linen,

they make nothing but cotton paper. The cotton paper is very soft and

easily creased to begin with, and it has a further defect: it is so

soluble that if you seep a book made of cotton paper in water for

fifteen minutes, it turns to a pulp, while an old book left in water

for a couple of hours is not spoilt. You could dry the old book, and

the pages, though yellow and faded, would still be legible, the work

would not be destroyed.

"There is a time coming when legislation will equalize our fortunes,

and we shall all be poor together; we shall want our linen and our

books to be cheap, just as people are beginning to prefer small

pictures because they have not wall space enough for large ones. Well,

the shirts and the books will not last, that is all; it is the same on

all sides, solidity is drying out. So this problem is one of the first

importance for literature, science, and politics.

"One day, in my office, there was a hot discussion going on about the

material that the Chinese use for making paper. Their paper is far

better than ours, because the raw material is better; and a good deal

was said about this thin, light Chinese paper, for if it is light and

thin, the texture is close, there are no transparent spots in it. In

Paris there are learned men among the printers' readers; Fourier and

Pierre Leroux are Lachevardiere's readers at this moment; and the

Comte de Saint-Simon, who happened to be correcting proofs for us,

came in in the middle of the discussion. He told us at once that,

according to Kempfer and du Halde, the _Broussonetia_ furnishes the

substance of the Chinese paper; it is a vegetable substance (like

linen or cotton for that matter). Another reader maintained that

Chinese paper was principally made of an animal substance, to wit, the

silk that is abundant there. They made a bet about it in my presence.

The Messieurs Didot are printers to the Institute, so naturally they

referred the question to that learned body. M. Marcel, who used to be

superintendent of the Royal Printing Establishment, was umpire, and he

sent the two readers to M. l'Abbe Grozier, Librarian at the Arsenal.

By the Abbe's decision they both lost their wages. The paper was not

made of silk nor yet from the _Broussonetia_; the pulp proved to be the

triturated fibre of some kind of bamboo. The Abbe Grozier had a

Chinese book, an iconographical and technological work, with a great

many pictures in it, illustrating all the different processes of

paper-making, and he showed us a picture of the workshop with the

bamboo stalks lying in a heap in the corner; it was extremely well

drawn.

"Lucien told me that your father, with the intuition of a man of

talent, had a glimmering of a notion of some way of replacing linen

rags with an exceedingly common vegetable product, not previously

manufactured, but taken direct from the soil, as the Chinese use

vegetable fibre at first hand. I have classified the guesses made by

those who came before me, and have begun to study the question. The

bamboo is a kind of reed; naturally I began to think of the reeds that

grow here in France.

"Labor is very cheap in China, where a workman earns three halfpence a

day, and this cheapness of labor enables the Chinese to manipulate

each sheet of paper separately. They take it out of the mould, and

press it between heated tablets of white porcelain, that is the secret

of the surface and consistence, the lightness and satin smoothness of

the best paper in the world. Well, here in Europe the work must be

done by machinery; machinery must take the place of cheap Chinese

labor. If we could but succeed in making a cheap paper of as good a

quality, the weight and thickness of printed books would be reduced by

more than one-half. A set of Voltaire, printed on our woven paper and

bound, weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds; it would only weigh

fifty if we used Chinese paper. That surely would be a triumph, for

the housing of many books has come to be a difficulty; everything has

grown smaller of late; this is not an age of giants; men have shrunk,

everything about them shrinks, and house-room into the bargain. Great

mansions and great suites of rooms will be abolished sooner or later

in Paris, for no one will afford to live in the great houses built by

our forefathers. What a disgrace for our age if none of its books

should last! Dutch paper--that is, paper made from flax--will be quite

unobtainable in ten years' time. Well, your brother told me of this

idea of your father's, this plan for using vegetable fibre in

paper-making, so you see that if I succeed, you have a right to----"

Lucien came up at that moment and interrupted David's generous

assertion.

"I do not know whether you have found the evening pleasant," said he;

"it has been a cruel time for me."

"Poor Lucien! what can have happened?" cried Eve, as she saw her

brother's excited face.

The poet told the history of his agony, pouring out a flood of

clamorous thoughts into those friendly hearts, Eve and David listening

in pained silence to a torrent of woes that exhibited such greatness

and such pettiness.

"M. de Bargeton is an old dotard. The indigestion will carry him off

before long, no doubt," Lucien said, as he made an end, "and then I

will look down on these proud people; I will marry Mme. de Bargeton. I

read to-night in her eyes a love as great as mine for her. Yes, she

felt all that I felt; she comforted me; she is as great and noble as

she is gracious and beautiful. She will never give me up."

"It is time that life was made smooth for him, is it not?" murmured

David, and for answer Eve pressed his arm without speaking. David

guessed her thoughts, and began at once to tell Lucien about his own

plans.

If Lucien was full of his troubles, the lovers were quite as full of

themselves. So absorbed were they, so eager that Lucien should approve

their happiness, that neither Eve nor David so much as noticed his

start of surprise at the news. Mme. de Bargeton's lover had been

dreaming of a great match for his sister; he would reach a high

position first, and then secure himself by an alliance with some

family of influence, and here was one more obstacle in his way to

success! His hopes were dashed to the ground. "If Mme. de Bargeton

consents to be Mme. de Rubempre, she would never care to have David

Sechard for a brother-in-law!"

This stated clearly and precisely was the thought that tortured

Lucien's inmost mind. "Louise is right!" he thought bitterly. "A man

with a career before him is never understood by his family."

If the marriage had not been announced immediately after Lucien's

fancy had put M. de Bargeton to death, he would have been radiant with

heartfelt delight at the news. If he had thought soberly over the

probable future of a beautiful and penniless girl like Eve Chardon, he

would have seen that this marriage was a piece of unhoped-for good

fortune. But he was living just now in a golden dream; he had soared

above all barriers on the wings of an _if_; he had seen a vision of

himself, rising above society; and it was painful to drop so suddenly

down to hard fact.

Eve and David both thought that their brother was overcome with the

sense of such generosity; to them, with their noble natures, the

silent consent was a sign of true friendship. David began to describe

with kindly and cordial eloquence the happy fortunes in store for them

all. Unchecked by protests put in by Eve, he furnished his first floor

with a lover's lavishness, built a second floor with boyish good faith

for Lucien, and rooms above the shed for Mme. Chardon--he meant to be

a son to her. In short, he made the whole family so happy and his

brother-in-law so independent, that Lucien fell under the spell of

David's voice and Eve's caresses; and as they went through the shadows

beside the still Charente, a gleam in the warm, star-lit night, he

forgot the sharp crown of thorns that had been pressed upon his head.

"M. de Rubempre" discovered David's real nature, in fact. His facile

character returned almost at once to the innocent, hard-working

burgher life that he knew; he saw it transfigured and free from care.

The buzz of the aristocratic world grew more and more remote; and when

at length they came upon the paved road of L'Houmeau, the ambitious

poet grasped his brother's hand, and made a third in the joy of the

happy lovers.

"If only your father makes no objection to the marriage," he said.

"You know how much he troubles himself about me; the old man lives for

himself," said David. "But I will go over to Marsac to-morrow and see

him, if it is only to ask leave to build."

David went back to the house with the brother and sister, and asked

Mme. Chardon's consent to his marriage with the eagerness of a man who

would fain have no delay. Eve's mother took her daughter's hand, and

gladly laid it in David's; and the lover, grown bolder on this, kissed

his fair betrothed on the forehead, and she flushed red, and smiled at

him.

"The betrothal of the poor," the mother said, raising her eyes as if

to pray for heaven's blessing upon them.--"You are brave, my boy," she

added, looking at David, "but we have fallen on evil fortune, and I am

afraid lest our bad luck should be infectious."

"We shall be rich and happy," David said earnestly. "To begin with,

you must not go out nursing any more, and you must come and live with

your daughter and Lucien in Angouleme."

The three began at once to tell the astonished mother all their

charming plans, and the family party gave themselves up to the

pleasure of chatting and weaving a romance, in which it is so pleasant

to enjoy future happiness, and to store the unsown harvest. They had

to put David out at the door; he could have wished the evening to last

for ever, and it was one o'clock in the morning when Lucien and his

future brother-in-law reached the Palet Gate. The unwonted movement

made honest Postel uneasy; he opened the window, and looking through

the Venetian shutters, he saw a light in Eve's room.

"What can be happening at the Chardons'?" thought he, and seeing

Lucien come in, he called out to him--

"What is the matter, sonny? Do you want me to do anything?"

"No, sir," returned the poet; "but as you are our friend, I can tell

you about it; my mother has just given her consent to my sister's

engagement to David Sechard."

For all answer, Postel shut the window with a bang, in despair that he

had not asked for Mlle. Chardon earlier.

David, however, did not go back into Angouleme; he took the road to

Marsac instead, and walked through the night the whole way to his

father's house. He went along by the side of the croft just as the sun

rose, and caught sight of the old "bear's" face under an almond-tree

that grew out of the hedge.

"Good day, father," called David.

"Why, is it you, my boy? How come you to be out on the road at this

time of day? There is your way in," he added, pointing to a little

wicket gate. "My vines have flowered and not a shoot has been frosted.

There will be twenty puncheons or more to the acre this year; but then

look at all the dung that has been put on the land!"

"Father, I have come on important business."

"Very well; how are your presses doing? You must be making heaps of

money as big as yourself."

"I shall some day, father, but I am not very well off just now."

"They all tell me that I ought not to put on so much manure," replied

his father. "The gentry, that is M. le Marquis, M. le Comte, and

Monsieur What-do-you-call-'em, say that I am letting down the quality

of the wine. What is the good of book-learning except to muddle your

wits? Just you listen: these gentlemen get seven, or sometimes eight

puncheons of wine to the acre, and they sell them for sixty francs

apiece, that means four hundred francs per acre at most in a good

year. Now, I make twenty puncheons, and get thirty francs apiece for

them--that is six hundred francs! And where are they, the fools?

Quality, quality, what is quality to me? They can keep their quality

for themselves, these Lord Marquises. Quality means hard cash for me,

that is what it means, You were saying?----"

"I am going to be married, father, and I have come to ask for----"

"Ask me for what? Nothing of the sort, my boy. Marry; I give you my

consent, but as for giving you anything else, I haven't a penny to

bless myself with. Dressing the soil is the ruin of me. These two

years I have been paying money out of pocket for top-dressing, and

taxes, and expenses of all kinds; Government eats up everything,

nearly all the profit goes to the Government. The poor growers have

made nothing these last two seasons. This year things don't look so

bad; and, of course, the beggarly puncheons have gone up to eleven

francs already. We work to put money into the coopers' pockets. Why,

are you going to marry before the vintage?----"

"I only came to ask for your consent, father."

"Oh! that is another thing. And who is the victim, if one may ask?"

"I am going to marry Mlle. Eve Chardon."

"Who may she be? What kind of victual does she eat?"

"She is the daughter of the late M. Chardon, the druggist in

L'Houmeau."

"You are going to marry a girl out of L'Houmeau! _you_! a burgess of

Angouleme, and printer to His Majesty! This is what comes of

book-learning! Send a boy to school, forsooth! Oh! well, then she is

very rich, is she, my boy?" and the old vinegrower came up closer with

a cajoling manner; "if you are marrying a girl out of L'Houmeau, it

must be because she has lots of cash, eh? Good! you will pay me my rent

now. There are two years and one-quarter owing, you know, my boy; that

is two thousand seven hundred francs altogether; the money will come

just in the nick of time to pay the cooper. If it was anybody else, I

should have a right to ask for interest; for, after all, business is

business, but I will let you off the interest. Well, how much has

she?"

"Just as much as my mother had."

The old vinegrower very nearly said, "Then she has only ten thousand

francs!" but he recollected just in time that he had declined to give

an account of her fortune to her son, and exclaimed, "She has

nothing!"

"My mother's fortune was her beauty and intelligence," said David.

"You just go into the market and see what you can get for it! Bless my

buttons! what bad luck parents have with their children. David, when I

married, I had a paper cap on my head for my whole fortune, and a pair

of arms; I was a poor pressman; but with the fine printing-house that

I gave you, with your industry, and your education, you might marry a

burgess' daughter, a woman with thirty or forty thousand francs. Give

up your fancy, and I will find you a wife myself. There is some one

about three miles away, a miller's widow, thirty-two years old, with a

hundred thousand francs in land. There is your chance! You can add her

property to Marsac, for they touch. Ah! what a fine property we should

have, and how I would look after it! They say she is going to marry

her foreman Courtois, but you are the better man of the two. I would

look after the mill, and she should live like a lady up in Angouleme."

"I am engaged, father."

"David, you know nothing of business; you will ruin yourself, I see.

Yes, if you marry this girl out of L'Houmeau, I shall square accounts

and summons you for the rent, for I see that no good will come of

this. Oh! my presses, my poor presses! it took some money to grease

you and keep you going. Nothing but a good year can comfort me after

this."

"It seems to me, father, that until now I have given you very little

trouble----"

"And paid mighty little rent," put in his parent.

"I came to ask you something else besides. Will you build a second

floor to your house, and some rooms above the shed?"

"Deuce a bit of it; I have not the cash, and that you know right well.

Besides, it would be money thrown clean away, for what would it bring

in? Oh! you get up early of a morning to come and ask me to build you

a place that would ruin a king, do you? Your name may be David, but I

have not got Solomon's treasury. Why, you are mad! or they changed my

child at nurse. There is one for you that will have grapes on it," he

said, interrupting himself to point out a shoot. "Offspring of this

sort don't disappoint their parents; you dung the vines, and they

repay you for it. I sent you to school; I spent any amount of money to

make a scholar of you; I sent you to the Didots to learn your

business; and all this fancy education ends in a daughter-in-law out

of L'Houmeau without a penny to her name. If you had not studied

books, if I had kept you under my eye, you would have done as I

pleased, and you would be marrying a miller's widow this day with a

hundred thousand francs in hand, to say nothing of the mill. Oh! your

cleverness leads you to imagine that I am going to reward this fine

sentiment by building palaces for you, does it? . . . Really, anybody

might think that the house that has been a house these two hundred

years was nothing but a pigsty, not fit for the girl out of L'Houmeau

to sleep in! What next! She is the Queen of France, I suppose."

"Very well, father, I will build the second floor myself; the son will

improve his father's property. It is not the usual way, but it happens

so sometimes."

"What, my lad! you can find money for building, can you, though you

can't find money to pay the rent, eh! You sly dog, to come round your

father."

The question thus raised was hard to lay, for the old man was only too

delighted to seize an opportunity of posing as a good father without

disbursing a penny; and all that David could obtain was his bare

consent to the marriage and free leave to do what he liked in the

house--at his own expense; the old "bear," that pattern of a thrifty

parent, kindly consenting not to demand the rent and drain the savings

to which David imprudently owned. David went back again in low

spirits. He saw that he could not reckon on his father's help in

misfortune.

In Angouleme that day people talked of nothing but the Bishop's

epigram and Mme. de Bargeton's reply. Every least thing that happened

that evening was so much exaggerated and embellished and twisted out

of all knowledge, that the poet became the hero of the hour. While

this storm in a teacup raged on high, a few drops fell among the

_bourgeoisie_; young men looked enviously after Lucien as he passed on

his way through Beaulieu, and he overheard chance phrases that filled

him with conceit.

"There is a lucky young fellow!" said an attorney's clerk, named

Petit-Claud, a plain-featured youth who had been at school with

Lucien, and treated him with small, patronizing airs.

"Yes, he certainly is," answered one of the young men who had been

present on the occasion of the reading; "he is a good-looking fellow,

he has some brains, and Mme. de Bargeton is quite wild about him."

Lucien had waited impatiently until he could be sure of finding Louise

alone. He had to break the tidings of his sister's marriage to the

arbitress of his destinies. Perhaps after yesterday's soiree, Louise

would be kinder than usual, and her kindness might lead to a moment of

happiness. So he thought, and he was not mistaken; Mme. de Bargeton

met him with a vehemence of sentiment that seemed like a touching

progress of passion to the novice in love. She abandoned her hands,

her beautiful golden hair, to the burning kisses of the poet who had

passed through such an ordeal.

"If only you could have seen your face whilst you were reading," cried

Louise, using the familiar _tu_, the caress of speech, since yesterday,

while her white hands wiped the pearls of sweat from the brows on

which she set a poet's crown. "There were sparks of fire in those

beautiful eyes! From your lips, as I watched them, there fell the

golden chains that suspend the hearts of men upon the poet's mouth.

You shall read Chenier through to me from beginning to end; he is the

lover's poet. You shall not be unhappy any longer; I will not have it.

Yes, dear angel, I will make an oasis for you, there you shall live

your poet's life, sometimes busy, sometimes languid; indolent, full of

work, and musing by turns; but never forget that you owe your laurels

to me, let that thought be my noble guerdon for the sufferings which I

must endure. Poor love! the world will not spare me any more than it

has spared you; the world is avenged on all happiness in which it has

no share. Yes, I shall always be a mark for envy--did you not see that

last night? The bloodthirsty insects are quick enough to drain every

wound that they pierce. But I was happy; I lived. It is so long since

all my heartstrings vibrated."

The tears flowed fast, and for all answer Lucien took Louise's hand

and gave it a lingering kiss. Every one about him soothed and caressed

the poet's vanity; his mother and his sister and David and Louise now

did the same. Every one helped to raise the imaginary pedestal on

which he had set himself. His friends's kindness and the fury of his

enemies combined to establish him more firmly in an ureal world. A

young imagination readily falls in with the flattering estimates of

others, a handsome young fellow so full of promise finds others eager

to help him on every side, and only after one or two sharp and bitter

lessons does he begin to see himself as an ordinary mortal.

"My beautiful Louise, do you mean in very truth to be my Beatrice, a

Beatrice who condescends to be loved?"

Louise raised the fine eyes, hitherto down-dropped.

"If you show yourself worthy--some day!" she said, with an angelic

smile which belied her words. "Are you not happy? To be the sole

possessor of a heart, to speak freely at all times, with the certainty

of being understood, is not this happiness?"

"Yes," he answered, with a lover's pout of vexation.

"Child!" she exclaimed, laughing at him. "Come, you have something to

tell me, have you not? You came in absorbed in thought, my Lucien."

Lucien, in fear and trembling, confided to his beloved that David was

in love with his sister Eve, and that his sister Eve was in love with

David, and that the two were to be married shortly.

"Poor Lucien!" said Louise, "he was afraid he should be beaten and

scolded, as if it was he himself that was going to be married! Why,

where is the harm?" she continued, her fingers toying with Lucien's

hair. "What is your family to me when you are an exception? Suppose

that my father were to marry his cook, would that trouble you much?

Dear boy, lovers are for each other their whole family. Have I a

greater interest than my Lucien in the world? Be great, find the way

to win fame, that is our affair!"

This selfish answer made Lucien the happiest of mortals. But in the

middle of the fantastic reasonings, with which Louise convinced him

that they two were alone in the world, in came M. de Bargeton. Lucien

frowned and seemed to be taken aback, but Louise made him a sign, and

asked him to stay to dinner and to read Andre de Chenier aloud to them

until people arrived for their evening game at cards.

"You will give her pleasure," said M. de Bargeton, "and me also.

Nothing suits me better than listening to reading aloud after dinner."

Cajoled by M. de Bargeton, cajoled by Louise, waited upon with the

respect which servants show to a favored guest of the house, Lucien

remained in the Hotel de Bargeton, and began to think of the luxuries

which he enjoyed for the time being as the rightful accessories of

Lucien de Rubempre. He felt his position so strong through Louise's

love and M. de Bargeton's weakness, that as the rooms filled, he

assumed a lordly air, which that fair lady encouraged. He tasted the

delights of despotic sway which Nais had acquired by right of

conquest, and liked to share with him; and, in short, that evening he

tried to act up to the part of the lion of the little town. A few of

those who marked these airs drew their own conclusions from them, and

thought that, according to the old expression, he had come to the last

term with the lady. Amelie, who had come with M. du Chatelet, was sure

of the deplorable fact, in a corner of the drawing-room, where the

jealous and envious gathered together.

"Do not think of calling Nais to account for the vanity of a

youngster, who is as proud as he can be because he has got into

society, where he never expected to set foot," said Chatelet. "Don't

you see that this Chardon takes the civility of a woman of the world

for an advance? He does not know the difference between the silence of

real passion and the patronizing graciousness due to his good looks

and youth and talent. It would be too bad if women were blamed for all

the desires which they inspire. _He_ certainly is in love with her, but

as for Nais----"

"Oh! Nais," echoed the perfidious Amelie, "Nais is well enough

pleased. A young man's love has so many attractions--at her age. A

woman grows young again in his company; she is a girl, and acts a

girl's hesitation and manners, and does not dream that she is

ridiculous. Just look! Think of a druggist's son giving himself a

conqueror's airs with Mme. de Bargeton."

"Love knows nought of high or low degree," hummed Adrien.

There was not a single house in Angouleme next day where the degree of

intimacy between M. Chardon (alias de Rubempre) and Mme. de Bargeton

was not discussed; and though the utmost extent of their guilt

amounted to two or three kisses, the world already chose to believe

the worst of both. Mme. de Bargeton paid the penalty of her

sovereignty. Among the various eccentricities of society, have you

never noticed its erratic judgments and the unaccountable differences

in the standard it requires of this or that man or woman? There are

some persons who may do anything; they may behave totally

irrationally, anything becomes them, and it is who shall be first to

justify their conduct; then, on the other hand, there are those on

whom the world is unaccountably severe, they must do everything well,

they are not allowed to fail nor to make mistakes, at their peril they

do anything foolish; you might compare these last to the much-admired

statues which must come down at once from their pedestal if the frost

chips off a nose or a finger. They are not permitted to be human; they

are required to be for ever divine and for ever impeccable. So one

glance exchanged between Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien outweighed twelve

years of Zizine's connection with Francis in the social balance; and a

squeeze of the hand drew down all the thunders of the Charente upon

the lovers.

David had brought a little secret hoard back with him from Paris, and

it was this sum that he set aside for the expenses of his marriage and

for the building of the second floor in his father's house. His

father's house it was; but, after all, was he not working for himself?

It would all be his again some day, and his father was sixty-eight

years old. So David build a timbered second story for Lucien, so as

not to put too great a strain on the old rifted house-walls. He took

pleasure in making the rooms where the fair Eve was to spend her life

as brave as might be.

It was a time of blithe and unmixed happiness for the friends. Lucien

was tired of the shabbiness of provincial life, and weary of the

sordid frugality that looked on a five-franc piece as a fortune, but

he bore the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling. His

moody looks had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope. He

saw the star shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to

come, and built the fabric of his good fortune on M. de Bargeton's

tomb. M. de Bargeton, troubled with indigestion from time to time,

cherished the happy delusion that indigestion after dinner was a

complaint to be cured by a hearty supper.

By the beginning of September, Lucien had ceased to be a printer's

foreman; he was M. de Rubempre, housed sumptuously in comparison with

his late quarters in the tumbledown attic with the dormer-window,

where "young Chardon" had lived in L'Houmeau; he was not even a "man

of L'Houmeau"; he lived in the heights of Angouleme, and dined four

times a week with Mme. de Bargeton. A friendship had grown up between

M. de Rubempre and the Bishop, and he went to the palace. His

occupations put him upon a level with the highest rank; his name would

be one day among the great names of France; and, in truth, as he went

to and fro in his apartments, the pretty sitting-room, the charming

bedroom, and the tastefully furnished study, he might console himself

for the thought that he drew thirty francs every month out of his

mother's and sister's hard earnings; for he saw the day approaching

when _An Archer of Charles IX._, the historical romance on which he had

been at work for two years, and a volume of verse entitled

_Marguerites_, should spread his fame through the world of literature,

and bring in money enough to repay them all, his mother and sister and

David. So, grown great in his own eyes, and giving ear to the echoes

of his name in the future, he could accept present sacrifices with

noble assurance; he smiled at his poverty, he relished the sense of

these last days of penury.

Eve and David had set Lucien's happiness before their own. They had

put off their wedding, for it took some time to paper and paint their

rooms, and to buy the furniture, and Lucien's affairs had been settled

first. No one who knew Lucien could wonder at their devotion. Lucien

was so engaging, he had such winning ways, his impatience and his

desires were so graciously expressed, that his cause was always won

before he opened his mouth to speak. This unlucky gift of fortune, if

it is the salvation of some, is the ruin of many more. Lucien and his

like find a world predisposed in favor of youth and good looks, and

ready to protect those who give it pleasure with the selfish

good-nature that flings alms to a beggar, if he appeals to the feelings

and awakens emotion; and in this favor many a grown child is content to

bask instead of putting it to a profitable use. With mistaken notions

as to the significance and the motive of social relations they imagine

that they shall always meet with deceptive smiles; and so at last the

moment comes for them when the world leaves them bald, stripped bare,

without fortune or worth, like an elderly coquette by the door of a

salon, or a stray rag in the gutter.

Eve herself had wished for the delay. She meant to establish the

little household on the most economical footing, and to buy only

strict necessaries; but what could two lovers refuse to a brother who

watched his sister at her work, and said in tones that came from the

heart, "How I wish I could sew!" The sober, observant David had shared

in the devotion; and yet, since Lucien's triumph, David had watched

him with misgivings; he was afraid that Lucien would change towards

them, afraid that he would look down upon their homely ways. Once or

twice, to try his brother, David had made him choose between home

pleasures and the great world, and saw that Lucien gave up the

delights of vanity for them, and exclaimed to himself, "They will not

spoil him for us!" Now and again the three friends and Mme. Chardon

arranged picnic parties in provincial fashion--a walk in the woods

along the Charente, not far from Angouleme, and dinner out on the

grass, David's apprentice bringing the basket of provisions to some

place appointed before-hand; and at night they would come back, tired

somewhat, but the whole excursion had not cost three francs. On great

occasion, when they dined at a _restaurat_, as it is called, a sort of a

country inn, a compromise between a provincial wineshop and a Parisian

_guinguette_, they would spend as much as five francs, divided between

David and the Chardons. David gave his brother infinite credit for

forsaking Mme. de Bargeton and grand dinners for these days in the

country, and the whole party made much of the great man of Angouleme.

Matters had gone so far, that the new home was very nearly ready, and

David had gone over to Marsac to persuade his father to come to the

wedding, not without a hope that the old man might relent at the sight

of his daughter-in-law, and give something towards the heavy expenses

of the alterations, when there befell one of those events which

entirely change the face of things in a small town.

Lucien and Louise had a spy in Chatelet, a spy who watched, with the

persistence of a hate in which avarice and passion are blended, for an

opportunity of making a scandal. Sixte meant that Mme. de Bargeton

should compromise herself with Lucien in such a way that she should be

"lost," as the saying goes; so he posed as Mme. de Bargeton's humble

confidant, admired Lucien in the Rue du Minage, and pulled him to

pieces everywhere else. Nais had gradually given him _les petites

entrees_, in the language of the court, for the lady no longer

mistrusted her elderly admirer; but Chatelet had taken too much for

granted--love was still in the Platonic stage, to the great despair of

Louise and Lucien.

There are, for that matter, love affairs which start with a good or a

bad beginning, as you prefer to take it. Two creatures launch into the

tactics of sentiment; they talk when they should be acting, and

skirmish in the open instead of settling down to a siege. And so they

grow tired of one another, expend their longings in empty space; and,

having time for reflection, come to their own conclusions about each

other. Many a passion that has taken the field in gorgeous array, with

colors flying and an ardor fit to turn the world upside down, has

turned home again without a victory, inglorious and crestfallen,

cutting but a foolish figure after these vain alarums and excursions.

Such mishaps are sometimes due to the diffidence of youth, sometimes

to the demurs of an inexperienced woman, for old players at this game

seldom end in a fiasco of this kind.

Provincial life, moreover, is singularly well calculated to keep

desire unsatisfied and maintain a lover's arguments on the

intellectual plane, while, at the same time, the very obstacles placed

in the way of the sweet intercourse which binds lovers so closely each

to each, hurry ardent souls on towards extreme measures. A system of

espionage of the most minute and intricate kind underlies provincial

life; every house is transparent, the solace of close friendships

which break no moral law is scarcely allowed; and such outrageously

scandalous constructions are put upon the most innocent human

intercourse, that many a woman's character is taken away without

cause. One here and there, weighed down by her unmerited punishment,

will regret that she has never known to the full the forbidden

felicity for which she is suffering. The world, which blames and

criticises with a superficial knowledge of the patent facts in which a

long inward struggle ends, is in reality a prime agent in bringing

such scandals about; and those whose voices are loudest in

condemnation of the alleged misconduct of some slandered woman never

give a thought to the immediate provocation of the overt step. That

step many a woman only takes after she has been unjustly accused and

condemned, and Mme. de Bargeton was now on the verge of this anomalous

position.

The obstacles at the outset of a passion of this kind are alarming to

inexperience, and those in the way of the two lovers were very like

the bonds by which the population of Lilliput throttled Gulliver, a

multiplicity of nothings, which made all movement impossible, and

baffle the most vehement desires. Mme. de Bargeton, for instance, must

always be visible. If she had denied herself to visitors when Lucien

was with her, it would have been all over with her; she might as well

have run away with him at once. It is true that they sat in the

boudoir, now grown so familiar to Lucien that he felt as if he had a

right to be there; but the doors stood scrupulously open, and

everything was arranged with the utmost propriety. M. de Bargeton

pervaded the house like a cockchafer; it never entered his head that

his wife could wish to be alone with Lucien. If he had been the only

person in the way, Nais could have got rid of him, sent him out of the

house, or given him something to do; but he was not the only one;

visitors flocked in upon her, and so much the more as curiosity

increased, for your provincial has a natural bent for teasing, and

delights to thwart a growing passion. The servants came and went about

the house promiscuously and without a summons; they had formed the

habits with a mistress who had nothing to conceal; any change now made

in her household ways was tantamount to a confession, and Angouleme

still hung in doubt.

Mme. de Bargeton could not set foot outside her house but the whole

town knew whither she was going. To take a walk alone with Lucien out

of Angouleme would have been a decided measure, indeed; it would have

been less dangerous to shut herself up with him in the house. There

would have been comments the next day if Lucien had stayed on till

midnight after the rooms were emptied. Within as without her house,

Mme. de Bargeton lived in public.

These details describe life in the provinces; an intrigue is either

openly avoided or impossible anywhere.

Like all women carried away for the first time by passion, Louise

discovered the difficulties of her position one by one. They

frightened her, and her terror reacted upon the fond talk that fills

the fairest hours which lovers spend alone together. Mme. de Bargeton

had no country house whither she could take her beloved poet, after

the manner of some women who will forge ingenious pretexts for burying

themselves in the wilderness; but, weary of living in public, and

pushed to extremities by a tyranny which afforded no pleasures sweet

enough to compensate for the heaviness of the yoke, she even thought

of Escarbas, and of going to see her aged father--so much irritated

was she by these paltry obstacles.

Chatelet did not believe in such innocence. He lay in wait, and

watched Lucien into the house, and followed a few minutes later,

always taking M. de Chandour, the most indiscreet person in the

clique, along with him; and, putting that gentleman first, hoped to

find a surprise by such perseverance in pursuit of the chance. His own

part was a very difficult one to play, and its success was the more

doubtful because he was bound to appear neutral if he was to prompt

the other actors who were to play in his drama. So, to give himself a

countenance, he had attached himself to the jealous Amelie, the better

to lull suspicion in Lucien and in Mme. de Bargeton, who was not

without perspicacity. In order to spy upon the pair, he had contrived

of late to open up a stock controversy on the point with M. de

Chandour. Chatelet said that Mme. de Bargeton was simply amusing

herself with Lucien; she was too proud, too high-born, to stoop to the

apothecary's son. The role of incredulity was in accordance with the

plan which he had laid down, for he wished to appear as Mme. de

Bargeton's champion. Stanislas de Chandour held that Mme. de Bargeton

had not been cruel to her lover, and Amelie goaded them to argument,

for she longed to know the truth. Each stated his case, and (as not

unfrequently happens in small country towns) some intimate friends of

the house dropped in in the middle of the argument. Stanislas and

Chatelet vied with each other in backing up their opinions by

observations extremely pertinent. It was hardly to be expected that

the champions should not seek to enlist partisans. "What do you

yourself think?" they asked, each of his neighbor. These polemics kept

Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien well in sight.

At length one day Chatelet called attention to the fact that whenever

he went with M. de Chandour to Mme. de Bargeton's and found Lucien

there, there was not a sign nor a trace of anything suspicious; the

boudoir door stood open, the servants came and went, there was nothing

mysterious to betray the sweet crime of love, and so forth and so

forth. Stanislas, who did not lack a certain spice of stupidity in his

composition, vowed that he would cross the room on tiptoe the next

day, and the perfidious Amelie held him to his bargain.

For Lucien that morrow was the day on which a young man tugs out some

of the hairs of his head, and inwardly vows that he will give up the

foolish business of sighing. He was accustomed to his situation. The

poet, who had seated himself so bashfully in the boudoir-sanctuary of

the queen of Angouleme, had been transformed into an urgent lover. Six

months had been enough to bring him on a level with Louise, and now he

would fain be her lord and master. He left home with a settled

determination to be extravagant in his behavior; he would say that it

was a matter of life or death to him; he would bring all the resources

of torrid eloquence into play; he would cry that he had lost his head,

that he could not think, could not write a line. The horror that some

women feel for premeditation does honor to their delicacy; they would

rather surrender upon the impulse of passion, than in fulfilment of a

contract. In general, prescribed happiness is not the kind that any of

us desire.

Mme. de Bargeton read fixed purpose in Lucien's eyes and forehead, and

in the agitation in his face and manner, and proposed to herself to

baffle him, urged thereto partly by a spirit of contradiction, partly

also by an exalted conception of love. Being given to exaggeration,

she set an exaggerated value upon her person. She looked upon herself

as a sovereign lady, a Beatrice, a Laura. She enthroned herself, like

some dame of the Middle Ages, upon a dais, looking down upon the

tourney of literature, and meant that Lucien, as in duty bound, should

win her by his prowess in the field; he must eclipse "the sublime

child," and Lamartine, and Sir Walter Scott, and Byron. The noble

creature regarded her love as a stimulating power; the desire which

she had kindled in Lucien should give him the energy to win glory for

himself. This feminine Quixotry is a sentiment which hallows love and

turns it to worthy uses; it exalts and reverences love. Mme. de

Bargeton having made up her mind to play the part of Dulcinea in

Lucien's life for seven or eight years to come, desired, like many

other provincials, to give herself as the reward of prolonged service,

a trial of constancy which should give her time to judge her lover.

Lucien began the strife by a piece of vehement petulence, at which a

woman laughs so long as she is heart-free, and saddens only when she

loves; whereupon Louise took a lofty tone, and began one of her long

orations, interlarded with high-sounding words.

"Was that your promise to me, Lucien?" she said, as she made an end.

"Do not sow regrets in the present time, so sweet as it is, to poison

my after life. Do not spoil the future, and, I say it with pride, do

not spoil the present! Is not my whole heart yours? What more must you

have? Can it be that your love is influenced by the clamor of the

senses, when it is the noblest privilege of the beloved to silence

them? For whom do you take me? Am I not your Beatrice? If I am not

something more than a woman for you, I am less than a woman."

"That is just what you might say to a man if you cared nothing at all

for him," cried Lucien, frantic with passion.

"If you cannot feel all the sincere love underlying my ideas, you will

never be worthy of me."

"You are throwing doubts on my love to dispense yourself from

responding to it," cried Lucien, and he flung himself weeping at her

feet.

The poor boy cried in earnest at the prospect of remaining so long at

the gate of paradise. The tears of the poet, who feels that he is

humbled through his strength, were mingled with childish crying for a

plaything.

"You have never loved me!" he cried.

"You do not believe what you say," she answered, flattered by his

violence.

"Then give me proof that you are mine," said the disheveled poet.

Just at that moment Stanislas came up unheard by either of the pair.

He beheld Lucien in tears, half reclining on the floor, with his head

on Louise's knee. The attitude was suspicious enough to satisfy

Stanislas; he turned sharply round upon Chatelet, who stood at the

door of the salon. Mme. de Bargeton sprang up in a moment, but the

spies beat a precipate retreat like intruders, and she was not quick

enough for them.

"Who came just now?" she asked the servants.

"M. de Chandour and M. du Chatelet," said Gentil, her old footman.

Mme. de Bargeton went back, pale and trembling, to her boudoir.

"If they saw you just now, I am lost," she told Lucien.

"So much the better!" exclaimed the poet, and she smiled to hear the

cry, so full of selfish love.

A story of this kind is aggravated in the provinces by the way in

which it is told. Everybody knew in a moment that Lucien had been

detected at Nais feet. M. de Chandour, elated by the important part he

played in the affair, went first to tell the great news at the club,

and thence from house to house, Chatelet hastening to say that _he_ had

seen nothing; but by putting himself out of court, he egged Stanislas

on to talk, he drew him on to add fresh details; and Stanislas,

thinking himself very witty, added a little to the tale every time

that he told it. Every one flocked to Amelie's house that evening, for

by that time the most exaggerated versions of the story were in

circulation among the Angouleme nobility, every narrator having

followed Stanislas' example. Women and men were alike impatient to

know the truth; and the women who put their hands before their faces

and shrieked the loudest were none other than Mesdames Amelie,

Zephirine, Fifine, and Lolotte, all with more or less heavy

indictments of illicit love laid to their charge. There were

variations in every key upon the painful theme.

"Well, well," said one of the ladies, "poor Nais! have you heard about

it? I do not believe it myself; she has a whole blameless record

behind her; she is far too proud to be anything but a patroness to M.

Chardon. Still, if it is true, I pity her with all my heart."

"She is all the more to be pitied because she is making herself

frightfully ridiculous; she is old enough to be M. Lulu's mother, as

Jacques called him. The little poet it twenty-two at most; and Nais,

between ourselves, is quite forty."

"For my own part," said M. du Chatelet, "I think that M. de Rubempre's

position in itself proves Nais' innocence. A man does not go down on

his knees to ask for what he has had already."

"That is as may be!" said Francis, with levity that brought

Zephirine's disapproving glance down on him.

"Do just tell us how it really was," they besought Stanislas, and

formed a small, secret committee in a corner of the salon.

Stanislas, in the long length, had put together a little story full of

facetious suggestions, and accompanied it with pantomime, which made

the thing prodigiously worse.

"It is incredible!"

"At midday?"

"Nais was the last person whom I should have suspected!"

"What will she do now?"

Then followed more comments, and suppositions without end. Chatelet

took Mme. de Bargeton's part; but he defended her so ill, that he

stirred the fire of gossip instead of putting it out.

Lili, disconsolate over the fall of the fairest angel in the

Angoumoisin hierarchy, went, dissolved in tears, to carry the news to

the palace. When the delighted Chatelet was convinced that the whole

town was agog, he went off to Mme. de Bargeton's, where, alas! there

was but one game of whist that night, and diplomatically asked Nais

for a little talk in the boudoir. They sat down on the sofa, and

Chatelet began in an undertone--

"You know what Angouleme is talking about, of course?"

"No."

"Very well, I am too much your friend to leave you in ignorance. I am

bound to put you in a position to silence slanders, invented, no

doubt, by Amelie, who has the overweening audacity to regard herself

as your rival. I came to call on you this morning with that monkey of

a Stanislas; he was a few paces ahead of me, and he came so far"

(pointing to the door of the boudoir); "he says that he _saw_ you and

M. de Rubempre in such a position that he could not enter; he turned

round upon me, quite bewildered as I was, and hurried me away before I

had time to think; we were out in Beaulieu before he told me why he

had beaten a retreat. If I had known, I would not have stirred out of

the house till I had cleared up the matter and exonerated you, but it

would have proved nothing to go back again then.

"Now, whether Stanislas' eyes deceived him, or whether he is right, _he

must have made a mistake_. Dear Nais, do not let that dolt trifle with

your life, your honor, your future; stop his mouth at once. You know

my position here. I have need of all these people, but still I am

entirely yours. Dispose of a life that belongs to you. You have

rejected my prayers, but my heart is always yours; I am ready to prove

my love for you at any time and in any way. Yes, I will watch over you

like a faithful servant, for no reward, but simply for the sake of the

pleasure that it is to me to do anything for you, even if you do not

know of it. This morning I have said everywhere that I was at the door

of the salon, and had seen nothing. If you are asked to give the name

of the person who told you about this gossip, pray make use of me. I

should be very proud to be your acknowledged champion; but, between

ourselves, M. de Bargeton is the proper person to ask Stanislas for an

explanation. . . . Suppose that young Rubempre had behaved foolishly,

a woman's character ought not to be at the mercy of the first

hare-brained boy who flings himself at her feet. That is what I have

been saying."

Nais bowed in acknowledgment, and looked thoughtful. She was weary to

disgust of provincial life. Chatelet had scarcely begun before her

mind turned to Paris. Meanwhile Mme. de Bargeton's adorer found the

silence somewhat awkward.

"Dispose of me, I repeat," he added.

"Thank you," answered the lady.

"What do you think of doing?"

"I shall see."

A prolonged pause.

"Are you so fond of that young Rubempre?"

A proud smile stole over her lips, she folded her arms, and fixed her

gaze on the curtains. Chatelet went out; he could not read that high

heart.

Later in the evening, when Lucien had taken his leave, and likewise

the four old gentlemen who came for their whist, without troubling

themselves about ill-founded tittle-tattle, M. de Bargeton was

preparing to go to bed, and had opened his mouth to bid his wife

good-night, when she stopped him.

"Come here, dear, I have something to say to you," she said, with a

certain solemnity.